SaskTel Email Sucks
I don’t think I gripe on this blog very often, but I have had so many problems with SaskTel email in the last month or two that I just have to gripe. For those that read this blog not from Saskatchewan you might not know much about SaskTel. SaskTel is the telecommunications company here in Saskatchewan. They are government owned and have a monopoly in providing phone service to people in the province. Shaw is starting to offer some voice over ip options but for the majority of places in Saskatchewan if you have a land line phone you have a SaskTel account. What does any of that have to do with my problem? Nothing really just some background.
In any case SaskTel is also one, if not the largest, Internet service providers in Saskatchewan. It makes sense really since SaskTel has the infrastructure to provide Internet service over the phone lines that they own. I get my high speed DSL connection from them. However I don’t use SaskTel for email. I use GMail. Mainly becuase the web mail option from SaskTel is an old clunky interface, and for the most part sucks. GMail is a much better system. The problem I have is I create my invoices as PDF files and email the invoices out over email from my GMail account. Most of my clients in Saskatoon and north are on SaskTel accounts and use SaskTel for email. Any email I send to my clients on SaskTel that are in Saskatoon and north never receive the email. It simply disappears into never never land never to be delivered or seen again. The mail does not bounce, it is not marked as spam, it just is gone.
I have tried explaining this to SaskTel support but when they try testing it they are sending mail to people that are either in Regina or Moose Jaw. Nowhere close to the Saskatoon and north. When I tried sending mail to SaskTel support it of course works perfectly. I try sending an email to one of my clients in Rosthern with an attachment, it disappears. Needless to say I have not been able to deliver any invoices to people in Saskatoon, Rosthern and Prince Albert by email. I have had to either hand deliver the invoices, use fax or old fashioned snail mail. This has been happening for over two months. I recently just tried email out new invoices to clients in Rosthern that are all on SaskTel email, guess what? None of them got the emails with attachments. I even tried sending it to my SaskTel email account. One email with an attachment, one without an attachment. I got the email without the attachment. The email with the attachment disappeared.
I know that no one will guarantee email service, but this is ridiculous. If you are using SaskTel for your email I highly suggest you switch to an email provider that is more reliable. I have been very pleased with GMail, and use it for the majority of my email. I can download it using POP3/IMAP and use my favourite email client to read and reply. When I am away from the office I can use the web to check and reply. Until I get my clients all switched over to GMail I suppose I will have to hand deliver my local invoices, otherwise I will never get paid. Thanks for nothing SaskTel.
Well I feel better now.
Comments
anon
Was just browsing the net and stumbled onto this. Whats going on is Sasktels in-house filtering service (I believe called Postini) is blocking your emails with attachments. By default Postini will block the majority of Outside Email addresses with attachments as a security feature. I love Gmail, use it, & encourage it, but problem is that its wide open. Anyone can sign up, including spammers. So the majority of major ISPs will block any Outside email addresses with attachments. Jpegs and gifs would probably get through, being that they're highly unlikely to hold a virus, but if you're sending an invoice in a .doc or .xls (both very susceptible files for carrying virus's) then by default they are probably going to be blocked & put into their quarantine bin. Now those testers were doing everything correct, email is very different from regular mail, geographical location is more or less innate when it comes to who's able to send/receive mail. All the tests they ran were probably done by the book. Your best bet at getting this little conundrum solved is to talk to your clients and have them add you as an approved sender in their Spam Filter Settings on Sasktel.net. Or if they are unsure/incapable of doing so, have them call the Internet Support line to add your email address on the approved list so everything you send gets through. You could also provide them with this link - a walkthrough on how to do so. https://support.sasktel.com/KanisaSupportSite/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=14153&sliceId=SAL_Public&dialogID=14330385&stateId=1%200%2014332002&highlight=off Big smiles, and hope the business goes well. Adios
LGR
Thanks for the reply. It was better than the help I got from Sasktel support all those many months ago. All the invoices are sent as PDF, no .docs or .xls files. It was in fact the Sasktel spam filter causing the problem. The emails were not being placed into the Quarantine bin, but were being deleted. It would have been helpful if they were at least bounced, but instead they went straight to a blackhole. Of course I can't prove that, but Sasktel support was pretty useless to help me and my clients with it. I spent way to many hours on the phone trying to find out how to fix it, and not one support person seemed to know how to whitelist an email address. My solution in the end for many of my clients was to migrate them to Google Apps for Domains GMail or the standard GMail. They have all been happy with the move and I doubt any of them will ever go back. Interestingly enough Postini is owned by Google. https://www.postini.com/
Tammy
Sasktel sucks, I have a bundle..as soon as I can I'm out..too slow, the service sucks...
vera
I really dont understand the computer very much I am a 75yr old grandma with grandchildren in the U.K. and I have sent a couple photos to them and they havnt received them is this why ?
LGR
Possibly. Call Sasktel and give them some grief. I do not even try to use Sasktel for email anymore. I use GMail from Google, it was just not worth the headache to work with Sasktel email.
BGP
Hi All, We run a business as well and it pisses us off to no end that we KNOW for a FACT that more than a large perchentage of our emails DO NOT go through and we are forever rewriting people to ask if they have receievd our EMAILS!! It's a damn shame and a joke that with Sasktels so called large business they run that they can't and will not do a better job for their paying customers. Most of the real mail goes into SPAM but with their new update where the hell is that now? Now I can't even check to see where any real mail has gone into there by mistake... what do we get for the money we pay for their service.. NOTHING BUT HEARTACHE! If we could go to another server that'd be great and if others would just say screw you sasktel, maybe they'd sit up and take noctice of the shitty job they do looking after their customers complaints... PISSEY to no end!!!!!! BGP